HIGHER ED

Against a backdrop of 21st-century east London, where cuts and job crunches and unemployment are ugly, unrelenting realities, three very different love stories bloom. Francine, a university administrator who firmly believes that she is unattractive and unloveable, is unhinged after witnessing a tragic road accident. Cracked open, she is also on the verge of realizing that she is worth something to someone. Meanwhile Robin, a young film professor who Francine has lusted after from afar, is awoken to beauty in the form of the young Polish waitress in his local café, who cannot believe that he might love her back. And then there is Olivia, Robin's charismatic student, a mixed race girl growing up in a racist household, who thought she'd been abandoned by her father, Ed. Conducting research for a law school project on what society owes the dead, she stumbles across him working in a council office, where he's in charge of burying the indigent and unclaimed. Soon she realizes that Ed is not the kind of man who would abandon anybody.

Thoughtful, poignant and profound, HIGHER ED is a brilliantly observed novel that illuminates the human capacity for love, and lingers in the soul long after the last page is read.

Tessa McWatt is the author of five previous novels and a novella for young adults. Her second novel, Dragons Cry, was shortlisted for The Toronto Book Awards and the Governor General's Literary Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of East London where she developed the BA and MA in Creative Writing and founded the UEL Writing Centre.